They had gone home in a cab together and then dined with
each other twice a week until they died. I myself was another. I
had met Grant while he was still a judge, on the balcony of the
National Liberal Club, and exchanged a few words about the weather.
Then we had talked for about an hour about politics and God; for
men always talk about the most important things to total strangers.
It is because in the total stranger we perceive man himself; the
image of God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts
of the wisdom of a moustache.
One of the most interesting of Basil's motley group of
acquaintances was Professor Chadd. He was known to the ethnological
world (which is a very interesting world, but a long way off this
one) as the second greatest, if not the greatest, authority on the
relations of savages to language. He was known to the neighbourhood
of Hart Street, Bloomsbury, as a bearded man with a bald head,
spectacles, and a patient face, the face of an unaccountable
Nonconformist who had forgotten how to be angry. He went to and fro
between the British Museum and a selection of blameless tea-shops,
with an armful of books and a poor but honest umbrella. He was
never seen without the books and the umbrella, and was supposed (by
the lighter wits of the Persian MS.
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